Selene…
Ever since Upis had told her about Artemis being her mother, she had shut herself inside of her apartment and hadn’t come out.
Right now she had decided to try and drown out all the overflowing emotions by listening to the constant stream of water crashing down on her from the shower head.
She’d already spent thirty minutes lying down in the shower room without bothering to clean herself and just wanted something to push all the horrible thoughts out of her head.
However, it wasn’t enough.
She needed something else to distract her.
She stood up, dried herself off, and got dressed as she left to go see Marcus. Hopefully she’d be able to help her take her mind off of her mother.
When she appeared at the front door of Marcus’s home, she hesitated to knock.
Maybe I shouldn’t burden him with my problems…she thought to herself as she turned around and was about to leave.
Before she could, the door behind her opened and Marcus was there standing in the doorway.
“Selene...its been a couple days since I’ve seen you,” he said.
Hearing his voice made her feel relaxed and happy again, even if for a moment, that she turned around to face him.
That feeling was crushed immediately as she looked him in the eyes and saw his haunted expression. He had bags under his eyes and he was very pale. He looked like he had seen something that really truly scared him.
“Oh Marcus…what happened to you?” she asked as she stood right up against him, reached her hands forward to hold him so she could look him in the eyes.
He let her hold his head for only a moment before he pulled away from her and asked, “Do you want to come in?”
“I...yes. Thank you,” she said as she followed him inside and closed the door behind her.
As she looked around, she noticed Thalia on the couch watching a movie eating popcorn. She turned around and waved at Selene before turning back to the movie.
Marcus walked around until she saw him back in the kitchen cleaning up after the mess he made making dinner for the two of them.
“Do you want to join us for dinner? I made beef and broccoli, its pretty good,” he said with such low enthusiasm that she didn’t know if she would make things worse for him by staying or leaving, but she wanted to talk to him.
“Sure. I can eat, but let me help you clean up,” she said and he didn’t push her away.
As the two of them worked to clean up some dirty dishes, the silence between them turned into agony.
She had to ask, “Is something wrong Marcus? You look...gaunt. Terrified even. What happened?”
“I…had a nightmare. Something so horrible that its making me question reality a bit,” he said as his hands began to shake.
She turned to stare at him in shock as she asked, “What do you mean? Are you saying that your dreams are real?”
“I...I think they are. In fact, the last dream I had, the person’s point of view I was in was so terrified that it broke me out of the dream and I woke up…screaming. Thalia came rushing down to see if I was okay only to find my eyes rolling back into my head as I was pulled back into the dream by force. Somehow...someway...the person in the dream knew I was there. He could tell that I shifted between them. He could see me through them.”
“Who...what saw you?” she asked.
He didn’t answer her as he looked down at the dishes.
When he returned his attention to her, he asked, “What about you? You don’t look too well yourself. As if you just learned about something awful.”
Selene then looked away from him as she said, “Uh...yeah. Recently I learned something about my mother and...I came here to try and distract myself from thinking about it.”
Marcus nodded his head in understanding as he said, “So she told you then, hm? I see. I’ll leave it alone then.”
The way he worded that sentence threw her off for a moment and she took a moment to process it.
“Wait…what do you mean by that? ‘She told you’? Who told you what?”
“Shit…,” Marcus said under his breath before he turned around and shouted over the movie to Thalia, “Can you go to your room for a moment? I need to have a chat with Selene for a moment.”
“When you two are done, can I finish the movie?” she asked as she picked up her popcorn to take with her.
“Yes, I promise. Now please…”
“Alright,” she said as she paused the movie and left the two of them alone.
As soon as they heard Thalia’s door click shut, Selene asked, “When you said ‘she told you’ when regarding my mother, what did you mean by that?”
Marcus turned to look at her and said, “Its about your mother Artemis, right?”
Selene’s eyes widened as she took a step back and asked, “You...you knew about it? How did you find out? For how long have you known this and not told me?”
“Only a couple days. Artemis came into my room trying to kill me in my sleep and I pieced it together on my own. She forced me to swear not to tell you or anyone else about it until after she had already told you about it on her own. Although, I guess the cat’s out of the bag.”
It took a moment for her to process all of what he had said that she could still hardly believe all of it right away.
“She…made you promise not to tell me? Why?”
“I guess because she was working up the courage to tell you herself. So? Did she tell you herself or did you find out some other way?”
“I…no. I found out from someone else.”
Marcus shook his head in exasperation, “Dammit…”
“But…why was she trying to kill you in your sleep? I thought that you and her were on good terms ever since Lunaas.”
“Good terms is a bit of a stretch and ever since that night when she tried to kill me, she’s been on my bad side. She stabbed me in the throat. Again. So I stabbed her in the throat right back.”
Selene made a croaking sound in disbelief but Marcus held up his hand as he said, “I didn’t kill her. She’s fine. I heard she made it to her fight just fine, right?”
“Yeah...I guess so.”
“Anyways, the reason she tried to kill me was apparently because she disapproves of you and I...being in in a relationship together. Although, we only went on one date. Heh,” he chuckled without humor.
Selene tried to open her mouth to retort but no sound came out. She could hardly accept that Artemis, knowing that she is her mother, would still be inserting her opinion into Selene’s love life while being almost completely absent from her life.
Marcus looked her in the eye and then smiled as he said, “I can tell that having an absent mother disapproving of who you’re dating must really bug you.”
“It does!” she said as she stamped her foot.
“Even so...I think you should talk to her and ask her why she was absent from your life. I mean...I know why but…,”
Selene looked at him and grabbed him by the shoulders.
“Then tell me!” she demanded.
He stayed silent for a moment before he said, “No. It has to come from Artemis’s mouth so that you two can confront this together. Otherwise nothing will get fixed. However, I will assure you that the reasons for her absence were completely out of her control and that if it was up to her, she never would have left you alone in that forest.”
“How…how can you say that to me? How can you...how can you keep that information from me like this?”
“Because for as long as I’ve known you two, even if it hasn’t been for very long, I’ve come to understand that you both tend to run away from your problems. You need to confront her yourself instead of depending on me to mediate it.”
Selene then let go of Marcus as she realized something about his words.
Ever since Ruvick told her that her mother was alive, she had tried to put it out of her head. She had tried to ignore it and fill her head with distractions so as not to dwell too long on her feelings of abandonment.
Now that she knows about her mother Artemis, even Marcus is trying to push her to confront it on her own.
“Maybe...maybe you are right.”
“Hm...Well, there is something else about the deal I made with Artemis. I gave her an ultimatum. Either she would have to approach you herself and tell you that she is your mother by the end of the contest or I would have to tell you myself. But since she wasn’t the one who told you, then that makes things complicated. The two of you need to resolve this eventually, and if I have to force the two of you in a room together to fix it, then I will.”
Selene chuckled as she asked, “Why do you want to help us patch things up so badly?”
Marcus then looked up at the ceiling and said, “Well…probably because my situation is similar to yours. Your father died during the Mordrinite war when you were young and you never got to meet your mother until later on. My mother was shot and died giving birth to my sister when I was eight years old. I never met my father because he disappeared shortly after I was born without a trace. The only records I had of him were on my birth certificate. His name was Lucien Wright, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find him. I couldn’t even find any pictures of him. Maybe he disappeared the same way Artemis did. I might never know. What I do know is that if I ever get the chance to meet my father, I want to form some kind of relationship with him because I want to keep alive what little family I have left and make them happy.”
Hearing this, Selene’s hands began to shake and she couldn’t help herself as she hugged Marcus, taking him by surprise.
“Whoa, what is this for?”
“I…I don’t know, but what you said…I want to keep my family together too. I want to be happy with them. Thank you for helping me figure that out.”
He slowly wrapped his own arms around her and patted her on the back.
“Well...I don’t know if you are still going to be able to hug me like this when I tell you this next thing.”
She slowly pulled away as she tilted her head as she said, “Marcus…?”
He then pointed to a corned of the room and snapped his fingers. From his finger tips, a small bolt of lighting shot out and struck the air until it formed a mass of black stone in the shape of Malthael.
“Malthael’s alive.”
“HUH?!” Selene exclaimed as her jaw hit the floor staring at the archdragon.
She then turned to look at Marcus and yelled, “HOW?! HOW IS HE STILL ALIVE?!”
She then started pulling at her hair in frustration as she shouted, “I KILLED YOU! HE KILLED YOU! WE, BOTH, KILLED YOU!”
Malthael looked at her all smug as he said, “Sadly, yes. But I still live.”
“Please explain this…” Selene asked as she stared at Marcus.
“Remember that heart I cut out from his corpse?”
Selene nodded.
“I cooked it up and ate it, and it turns out that Malthael’s soul was tied to the piece I cut out. Basically, I ate his soul and he bonded to me.”
“I…I don’t know how to feel about this,” Selene said as she paced around the room.
“If it makes you feel any better, I did not kill your father,” Malthael said and Selene’s head spun around to stare at him before turning back to look at Marcus.
“What does he mean by that?” she asked.
“You’ll have to talk to Artemis about that because its not my story to tell, just know that he is telling you the truth.”
“This is...the worst way for me to learn about all of this,” she said as she sat down on the floor and leaned her head back against the wall.
Marcus decided to sit down on the floor against the opposite wall and looked her in the eyes.
“With everything you’ve heard tonight, what are you going to do now?”
“I…I have too much on my mind. I can’t really decide what to focus on first. The fact that Artemis is my mother; that Malthael is alive and that you’re keeping him as a pet; or that he wasn’t the reason my father was killed.”
Marcus sighed as he stood up and walked towards her.
She watched as he then sat down on the floor next to her, waved his hand through the air, and a glass bottle of alcohol appeared along with two glasses.
“At times like these, when met with something too difficult to think about, its best to wind down and think about it later. That’s for future you to figure out, not the you right now,” he said as he poured out some alcohol for the both of them.
He then handed her a glass and asked, “Care for a drink with me?”
She was a little surprised to see him wave his hand and make a glass of scotch appear from thin air but it wouldn’t be the most impressive thing she had seen him do so she ignored it and took the glass.
She took a sip of the scotch and was pleased with the smoothness and taste.
“That’s… good,” she said as she savored the taste.
“Oh, by the way. If you decide to stay with me, you’ll get to order Malthael around all you want,” he said with a smile.
Selene laughed as she finished her glass and she asked him to pour her another.
Thalia…
After waiting over an hour for them to finish their conversation, she felt like she was going to die from boredom.
She opened the door and left her room to resume her movie when she caught the smell of booze in the air and wrinkled her nose in disgust.
“Ugh...what the…,” she muttered as she went in the kitchen to look for Marcus and Selene.
And she found them, passed out drunk leaning up against each other in the kitchen holding an empty bottle.
Thalia sighed as she pulled out a washcloth and wiped up any of the alcohol that leaked onto the floor.
She then took the bottle and glasses away from them and quietly put them in the sink.
Then she went into Marcus’s bedroom and pulled the blanket off of his bed and set it on the floor for a moment.
Thalia knew that she was too weak to carry the two of them to bed on her own so she did the next best thing.
She dragged their sleeping bodies until she could put them into sleeping positions on the floor next to each other.
She put pillows under their heads and draped the blanket over them.
“Sleep tight you two,” she said as she put the food away before going to bed for the night.